European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Christian Matheson Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab) [V]]

I shall be voting in favour of the deal today, but not with any enthusiasm. This is an awful deal—the first trade deal in history to make trade even harder. It removes freedoms and piles red tape and administrative burden on businesses. It is not no deal, however, and my real fear is that the Conservative party has been captured to such an extent by fanatics and maniacs of hard Brexit that no deal remains a possibility. Since the only choice on the table today is between this deal and no deal, I will vote to stop no deal, especially since trade unions and business groups are urging a vote in support to get past this hurdle.

I am clear that this is an extremist Brexit that breaks all the promises about having the exact same benefits of membership of the EU. It must be judged not only in juxtaposition to no deal, but in comparison to what we left as members of the EU. There is £200 billion in lost wealth, for starters, which rather puts the lies about £350 million a week for the NHS into perspective. Of course, the deal says nothing, as other hon. Members have said, about trade in services—a rather huge omission, especially for somewhere such as Chester with a large financial services sector.

I have read that the leaders of the fishing industry are unhappy with the deal. What did they expect? Surely they know that the current Prime Minister will say anything that is necessary to get him out of whatever situation he is in, with no sense of responsibility for promises made and no sense of commitment to anything except himself. It was the same with Gibraltar—I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—whose Government were promised that any deal would include that territory, but this deal does not. It was the same with Airbus, which is so important to my constituency. A commitment was given on the US tariff dispute in late November but broken by mid-December. This will not stand us in good stead when we are negotiating future international agreements.

The Government are desperate to agree a deal—any deal—with the USA, however detrimental to long-term UK interests, in order to validate their Brexit policy. They have already alienated the Biden Administration, and that Administration are not even in office yet. Now they are alienating the EU. In global terms, there are only three shows in town: the USA, China and the EU. We have walked away from the EU, and now the Prime Minister announces that we will be in direct competition with it. The road he is leading us down will not end well for the UK, because we are now easy pickings for the much larger blocs, and soundbites such as “Global Britain” will not alter that.

The deal will make us poorer, it will make us weaker and less secure, and it will make us less road relevant globally. It is not no deal, but barely so. I give notice that I consider it to be the barest of foundations on which to build back a better, more progressive relationship with our European neighbours and friends in the long-term interests of the whole United Kingdom and all who live here, and that is what I intend to do.